- Update cadenceSignal
- Event-drivenCapture
- ~20 HzCrypto
- ~2 HzSports
Most analysis reads what the book says, the prices and sizes. Quote-update intensity reads how often it says anything at all. Because capture is event-driven, fired by each change Polymarket emits, the cadence of snapshots is a direct measure of how busy the book is. Quiet markets barely tick; active ones burst, and the burst is the tell.
Capture here is not a fixed-rate poll. A snapshot is triggered when Polymarket emits a change to the book, throttled only to a 50ms minimum interval and deduplicated on the top levels so identical frames are not stored twice. That design means the rate at which snapshots arrive is itself information: more updates means a more active book, and the cadence rises and falls with the market’s pulse.
So before you read a single price, you can read the tempo. Count updates per unit time and you have a churn series, a measure of how hard makers are working to reprice. It needs no order-book parsing, just the timestamps and the sequence numbers that ride on every snapshot.
What the cadence tells you
Churn rate
Updates per second is a direct read on how often the book is being repriced, high churn is an active, contested market.
- Updates per second
- Repricing pressure
- Activity without reading prices
Bursts around events
A sudden spike in update rate marks the moment new information hits and makers scramble to requote.
- Information arrival
- Requote scrambles
- Datable spikes
Quiet baselines
Long stretches of sparse updates are the calm regime, the baseline a burst is measured against.
- Sparse ticks
- The calm regime
- Contrast for bursts
Measuring the intensity
- 1Pull the snapshots for the market and window, you do not need the book, just the timestamps and sequence numbers, so the query is cheap and light.
- 2Bin the snapshots into fixed time buckets and count how many fall in each, that count per bucket is the raw update-intensity series.
- 3Use sequence_number to confirm you are counting real distinct updates and to spot any capture gaps, so a missing stretch is not read as a quiet one.
- 4Normalise against the market’s own quiet baseline, since a “busy” crypto book and a “busy” sports book operate at very different natural rates.
- 5Mark the bursts where intensity jumps well above baseline, then align them to known event times to see what woke the market up.
The fields the measure reads
capture_timestampWhen we processed each update, the cadence clockevent_timestampPolymarket emit time, for aligning bursts to eventssequence_numberDistinct-update count and gap detection- 50ms min intervalThe throttle that caps the raw rate
The two timestamps serve different jobs here. capture_timestamp is the cadence clock, the rhythm of how fast updates landed in our pipeline. event_timestamp is for alignment, pinning a burst to the moment Polymarket emitted the change so you can line it up with a known event. The sequence number is your guard against mistaking a capture gap for genuine calm.
Why the per-category rate caps what you can see
- Crypto markets capture near ~20 Hz, so the intensity series is fine-grained, you can resolve short bursts and see the cadence breathe.
- Sports sample near ~2 Hz and economics, weather, social and equities slower still, so the same burst is captured with a coarser ruler; widen your buckets there or the series turns spiky and misleading.
- The 50ms throttle and top-level dedup cap the raw rate, so intensity measures emitted, meaningful changes, not a flood of identical frames padding the count.
- Because the rate floor differs by category, always normalise to each market’s own baseline; comparing a sports book’s raw update count to a crypto book’s is comparing two different rulers.
Updates are changes, not trades
Quote-update intensity counts how often the book changed, which is requoting activity, not executed volume. A maker flickering size in and out raises the count without a single trade. And the per-category capture rate sets a ceiling on the cadence you can observe. The measure is a rigorous, reproducible read on book churn from the data we capture, not a trade tape.
A quiet book barely whispers; an active one will not stop talking. You can measure how awake a market is before you read a single price it quotes.
Measure the tempo yourself
Pull snapshot timestamps across a window from the API and build the intensity series; the docs show the parameters and pagination.
Frequently asked questions
What is quote-update intensity?
It is how often the order book changes per unit time. Because capture here is event-driven, a snapshot is triggered whenever Polymarket emits a change, throttled to a 50ms minimum and deduplicated on the top levels, the rate at which snapshots arrive is a direct measure of how active the book is. Counting updates per time bucket gives you a churn series without reading a single price.
Which timestamp do I use to measure cadence?
Use capture_timestamp for the cadence itself, it is the clock for when each update landed in the pipeline. Use event_timestamp when you want to align a burst of activity to a known event, since it is Polymarket’s own emit time. Carry sequence_number as well so you can confirm distinct updates and detect any capture gap, rather than mistaking missing data for a quiet stretch.
Why do crypto and sports markets show different update rates?
The capture rate differs by category, crypto is near ~20 Hz, sports near ~2 Hz, and economics, weather, social and equities slower still. That floor is a property of how active each market is and how often it emits changes. Because of it, always normalise update intensity to each market’s own baseline; comparing a sports book’s raw count to a crypto book’s is comparing two different rulers.
Does a high update rate mean lots of trading happened?
No, update intensity counts changes to the book, which is requoting activity, not executed volume. A maker flickering size in and out raises the count without any trade occurring. The 50ms throttle and top-level dedup ensure you are counting meaningful emitted changes rather than identical frames, but it remains a measure of book churn, not a trade tape. Resolved Markets captures the book read-only.